Daryabari is the founder of the Unique Zan Foundation, which promotes women’s opportunities in the Middle East. She has also created Stanford University’s $2.5 million Persian studies chair endowment and an annual Bita Prize to promote Iranian fine arts and history.
In addition, she founded the Pars Equality Center, the first legal assistance center in the nation for Iranians. “This is for saving the dignity of Iranian-Americans in the United States against any discrimination,” she said at a fundraiser for the center last month.
The San Francisco-based organization was actualized this past October, but Daryabari’s desire to develop the legal assistance center started many years ago when she heard of an Iranian immigrant who experienced sarcastic comments from a Social Security Office employee for wearing hijab.
While working on the project, Daryabari approached Banafsheh Akhlaghi, a lawyer and former Amnesty International staffer, who was involved in the case of a deaf Iranian Jewish man about to be deported. Daryabari wanted to help and shared her dream of creating support groups specifically for Iranians.
Akhlaghi created the National Legal Sanctuary for Community Advancement, which serves numerous clients from the Middle East, North Africa and Asian countries. But she did not see value in a center solely for Iranians until last year when she noticed that 68 percent of National Legal Sanctuary’s cases involved Iranian-Americans. With such apparent high need, Daryabari and Akhlaghi founded the Pars Equality Center in 2010.
“There are a lot of people like Bita who have access to financial means, but there are very few people who use them as a means for social change and social good,” Akhlaghi told the San Francisco Chronicle.
A friend of 15 years, California dentist Nazila Dorodian, says Daryabari is to-the-point about issues. “She was always bothered by what was going on in Iran. She is very vocal about what she thinks is right, whether it is world politics, foreign policy or education. There’s no BS with Bita,” Dorodian said.
As her aunt, Kaynoosh Partamian, a psychologist, put it, “She has always rooted for the underdog.”
Daryabari left Iran when she was 16 because she refused to wear hijab. Her parents sent her to live with an aunt and uncle in St. Joseph, Missouri, where she said her classmates chided her and called her a terrorist in reference to the hostage episode four years earlier.
In 1991, she married Kordestani. In 1999, he became one of Google’s first employees. He is credited with developing Google’s business model, converting Google from an interesting idea into a profit-making business. Despite his name, Kordestani is an ethnic Persian.
But Kordestani’s eye was attracted by a co-worker, Gisel Hiscock. Kordestani divorced Daryabari in 2008 and married Hiscock. Kordestani is reputed to be worth about $2 billion; it is not known what the divorce cost him, but Bita is not suffering.
In January 2009, Daryabari wed Reza Malek, a neuro-endovascular surgeon based in San Jose, California.
Daryabari received a degree in computer science from California State University at Hayward and a masters in telecommunications management from Golden Gate University. She left the telecommunications industry after numerous years to raise her children, a son, now 11, and a 14-year-old daughter.
